Businessman pays €759 for promoted tweet to criticise British Airways

Euronews

A British businessman upset with an airline’s customer service has made innovative use of social media to air his grievance.

Hasan Syed, fed up with British Airways over its handling of his father’s lost luggage, tweeted his annoyance. But instead of just putting out a normal message on Twitter, he put his hand in his pocket to reach as many people as possible.

The promoted tweet – which cost €759 ($1,000) and was aimed at the airline’s 300,000 followers on Twitter – read: “Don’t fly @BritishAirways. Their customer service is horrendous.”

He decided to highlight the airline’s customer service after his father’s luggage was lost after a flight from Chicago to Paris.

Four hours after the tweet was posted, the airline’s Twitter account responded: “Sorry for the delay in responding, our twitter feed is open 09:00-17:00 GMT. Please DM [direct message] your baggage ref and we’ll look into this.”

Shashank Nigam, chief executive of aviation consultancy SimpliFlying, commenting on the new trend, said: “The implications are tremendous for the future of airline customer service, especially on social media.

“In the first six hours since the tweet was promoted, it had garnered over 25,000 impressions only on Twitter.”

British Airways later apologised for any “inconvenience caused” and said the bag was due to be delivered today.